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Mosquito larvae and pupae are the best food for Paros readily available during the warm season everywhere. There are two reasons for it:
1. This food is the nearest to the natural food they get and like at home, not the same, but near to it. They like it very much. If you feed them several different foods at the same time including mosquito larvae they go straightly for them. This is due to the bigness and quickness of their movements, too.;
2. Adult Paros get safely ready for spawning by it. This is sometimes a problem. Some other foods do not safely lead to that end.
If you are used to feed Artemia naupliae to them (only good when they are freshly hatched) you are much astonished about Paros trying to catch big mosquito larvae. Before having seen this one does not think them to be able or willing to take such big stuff. But having seen that, you see that permanent feeding on that small stuff Artemia is good with respect to the nutritional value (they mostly get ready for spawning by this either), but bad with respect to missing bigness and motion of the prey.
Unfortunately, the biggest mosquito larvae and very often the pupae are too big even for big adult Paros. Nevertheless, they try to catch them but often fail. The biggest pupae are too hard, too. But you can harvest them in any stage of development, even as eggs for hatching in the tank of small young fish. They have the best nutritional value of all foods. Often, during winter time you are unable to get Paros spawning. But when temperatures rise and mosquito larvae are available, this period ends after a few days only.
[quote=”Peter Finke” post=3778] Often, during winter time you are unable to get Paros spawning. But when temperatures rise and mosquito larvae are available, this period ends after a few days only.[/quote]
Peter, do you think this is becouse of low content of ekdysteroids in the commonly used food? Of course there may be multiple causes for this but I was not able to find any data on ekdysteroids content in Artemia and Moina even though common logic makes me think they have to be there becouse they are also moulting. I was able to find some extensive paper on ekdysteroids content fluctulations in freshwatershrimp Macrobrachium rosenbergii but I only had time to read the abstract.For those who are not familiar with ekdysteroids, you can use google translator and read this 1 page article. I think its very interesting for those who want to know more about why insect larvae are such a great food. Do not worry, its written for aquarists, no extensive knowledge is needed to understand. 😉
[quote=”Deepin peat” post=3779] Peter, do you think this is becouse of low content of ekdysteroids in the commonly used food? Of course there may be multiple causes for this but I was not able to find any data on ekdysteroids content in Artemia and Moina even though common logic makes me think they have to be there becouse they are also moulting.[/quote]
I really don’t know, but I could imagine that this is the cause. Sorry, I can’t say it more precisely. I say “thank you” for the paper, too.
No problem, glad to contribute with the link. I can imagine there is very little research done on this so far.
Interesting link, thank you!
By the way – yesterday the mosquito population in our flat had a little increase 😉 😛 :whistle:[quote=”7 Zwerge” post=3783]By the way – yesterday the mosquito population in our flat had a little increase 😉 😛 :whistle:[/quote]
As I told you before the simple rule is you have to keep denying and in the worst cases tell the family that these are Chironomids that do not bite B)
+ of course get some plastic food storage box with a lid and store the larvae in fridge. This is important not just to stop their developement but also the slowdown of the metabolism will preserve their nutritional value.
Thank you, good Idea for the future. With the original nettle & so stinky water or with fresh osmosis water?
👿 concerning denying: had no chance: they were detected flying out of the tank by my partner and they bite at once :woohoo: :side: :silly:
Original water is best, you can take some bottle with you to the garden and bring a liter or two and exchange it partialy if you want to store the larvae for longer time in the fridge in case you see the water got poluted during storage. But I simply catch enough larvae to have enough for a week or so and store them in the original water without any problems even though it is many of them. Compared to white worms and blood worms who definitely need water changes if stored in bigger quantities, black mosquitoes larvae are very hardy from this point of view.
Hallo!
Now I have a question, how you manage your live food when you are away 10 -14 days :
1. You have someone who is able to do care for the live food as you do yourself?
2. Just giving brine shrimps?
3. Giving buyed live food (does not survive a whole week, even if fresh arrived in the shop), perhaps for the second week?
4. Feeding one week what’s in storage and the second week diet 🙁 ?I am very much tempted by the possibility to get a pair of P. phoenicurus, but that would double the supply for vacation ….
Hm, from my experience taking care about the food cultures by the family is much bigger problem than taking care for the fish. So what I do is that I reduce the cultures heavily before I leave home and transfer them to maintanance mode with lower temperatures and make my family feed only very lightly and every other day. This is done with both moina and rotifera cultures If I currently keep some. Feeding and maintaining high density cultures by the family always resulted in disaster for me 🙁 By now I keep fresh water Rotifera eggs that allow me to always start a new culture and I have Moina on the garden so I only run indoor cultures during freezing periods of winter. Probably starting a garden culture of Moina would work for you to, just make a small pond or use a big barrel or something, put in there some leaves or couple handfulls of grass and leave it alone. This way you should be always able to renew your culture or even collect some Moina for the week to come.
As for the feeding for periods of two weeks, I would just use brine shrimp, its the easiest way and there is no harm to be done.
Hope that helps.
+ Be very very carefull with bought live foods, especially bloodworms, tubifex and even glass worms if they are stored uncooled and dry, in room temperatures they loose most of their nutritional value too. There are loads of bacteriae in them so you have to rinse them extremely well and remove all the dead ones. Especially bloodworms and tubifex are collected on highly poluted localities for commercial reasons and mostly contain high levels of cumulative poisons.
Thank you Pavel!
I also thought of brine shrimps!
And concerning bought live food:
Till now I only tried brine shrimps, white mosquito larves (too big I think) and marine copepoda, and I buy them just the day they arrive in the shop (they store them in a big fridge and they get them in isolated styrofoam boxes once a week).Just in case that my vacation service would not manage to renew brine shrimps …
My moina I have indoor … do you think they will improve being outside on balcony? We now have autumn weather, at day just 14 degrees Celsius about …
Tomorrow I will go again in my garden and bring live food for a week …. 🙂
I am just planning 🙂 for one or two live food needing tank its enough what I have (even my little buckets for mosquito larves on balcony) but for more tanks in future … 😉
Till now I have a 54l tank for my 4 linkei, one prepared 25l waiting for youngsters (a 10 l without water yet for babies),
one long (1m x 25 x 25) tank with 8 Spaerichtys selatanensis,and a pensioners tank 100l for my rest of “normal” aquaristic fish (already about 8 years old or more): 8 Tannichtys micagamae, 10 Corydoras pygmaeus… they just get living food if I have enough plenty… and perhaps they just live as long as I will have more gurami youngsters to try a real black water group with some Paros, some Spaerichtys selatanensis and some boraras brigitae … but that ist future.
Till now I need living food for two tanks (Paros and Spaerichtys).
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